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Unweaving the rainbow

When Newton performed the now-famous prism experiment, he managed to split white light into its constituent 7 colours by passing it through a prism. The natural conclusion that people drew was that it was the prism that had the colours – like a tv screen. Newton was adamant that it was white light which itself had the colours, and to prove this, he placed an inverted prism, which sort of, sucked in all the colours again and produced white light. He called it recombination of light.

Interesting, the power of a simple prism to draw out whatever is in you. And take it away. All the while, remaining totally unaffected, almost indifferent, inert, stable, yourself.

All this at the speed of light.

Some days both phenomena can happen in a single day. A day would start white – colourless – and out of nowhere – a prism would draw out colours which were always there, just unseen, unsuspected, unaccounted for. Out of nowhere. A rainbow. A dancing rainbow where your own breath doesn’t seem to obey your command – your own being takes a will of its own. A dance drawn out of someone who cant shake a step to save his life.

And suddenly, when you look up, you observe – that the world is colourless. Where did all the colours go? Why is your red car suddenly grey? Why is the traffic light brown? Why did the world suddenly move to the 1950’s, when, as everybody who knows anything, knows that there was no colour in the world – people lived in black and white.

Newton would call it recombination.

All the colours of the world, all the light of the world, combined to form a single question.

Someday, if you are lucky, you will be strong enough, ruthless enough, to carry your own prism with you. You will have the will to bend light to your whims. Disperse it, recombine it. Do what you want with it.